After the Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhang Xing's life began to grow increasingly uneventful.
Military and national affairs, along with changes among the court's highest ranks, seemed to grow remote, forever relegated to topics people discussed while slacking off, seldom finding any reflection in everyday life. Recruitment continued, the effects of the ranking list lingered, and the disturbances they caused still persisted, but everyone in the Eastern Capital was beginning to get used to them. Even Zhang Xing had grown exacting and casual when helping process the paperwork for public-order cases. Only those young men who seemed both the most innocent and the most promising received his help on paper.
Zhang Xing understood perfectly well why this was happening. Ultimately, the country had returned to its normal state; ultimately, he had chosen clerical work over field duty. Otherwise, at the very least, his everyday life would have featured the excitement of fighting and killing.
Even now, Qin Bao still frequently returned from field duty covered in blood.
Zhang Sanlang, who was thriving at the Jing'an Directorate, did not think he had made the wrong choice. Lying low, wanting to stay alive-there was nothing shameful about that. Yet when he tossed and turned at night, or practiced martial arts and meditated each day, he could never quite suppress a trace of restlessness.
When would I become an expert at condensing the core?
When would I become a Black Sash?
When could I live a little more freely, happily, and unrestrainedly in this feudal age of rigid hierarchies?
And although Inspector Bai still looked after me, wasn't he gradually growing more distant too?
In late autumn, during the farming lull, the court suddenly announced that a Bright Hall would be built in Ziwei Palace.
"The Son of Heaven sits in the Bright Hall"-the phrase